A Brief Jaunt to Japan in Search of Missing Heads
by InsertImaginativeNameHere
Summary: When Jim was a child back in Ireland, he saw a dullahan first-hand. Now he has been hired by a multi-national corporation to find a familiar-looking misplaced head. His trip does not go as planned, for a number of reasons, but hey at least he had some really nice sushi while over there.
1. Prologue - Catalysts

**Moriarty's Brief Jaunt to Japan**

 **Prologue - Catalysts**

When Jim was a teenager, back in Ireland, there were two events that changed his life significantly. Without them he could not confidently state he would have reached the dizzying heights he had since risen to, the heights that came before a fall, oh but not yet, not yet. It would come later, in time. 'That which goeth up must cometh down', or some shit, and so on and so on, blah blah blah.

The two events were as follows: the discovery of worlds beyond what people knew and an encounter with a stranger from Japan. Sometimes he questioned which was more abnormal: the headless rider who passed by him down the street one night or the clinically insane doctor who arrived not long after. Perhaps it wasn't so much that they were his specific starting point, but in his head when he looked back, that was where it all began, sneaking out as a kid after dark and wandering aimlessly, until those two events fundamentally changed him. Or no, not changed, awoke a sleeping dragon inside. Something poetic, like. Even then he had a flair for the dramatic. Even then he had all the formative materials for a criminal mastermind, even if he did say so himself; and _of course_ he did. All he needed was the kick.

Would something else have inspired him, he wondered, _him_ , who was already a conniver already a _murderer_ even then? Poor, poor Carl Powers, his death might otherwise have been a one off, it would have been such a _waste_. Regardless, he knew without adequate motivation he would never have thrown himself into his particular line of work. His talents might have gone to waste. Heavens forbid, he might have been an ordinary thug, a common criminal! A useless, directionless _zombie_. Honing himself had taken time. And as with any reaction, it required a catalyst.

The incident of the first event took place on a Sunday evening, or early Monday morning, whichever, when Jim had gone out for the night to observe and explore. He'd briefly amused himself with the trifling matter of throwing stones at a cat, until the mundane violence became tedious. Then he walked, hands in pockets, pulling his coat around him and praying that for once it didn't bloody rain. He was interrupted by the clatter of hooves, which seemed a bit odd at three in the morning. Late night pony club?

Well, shit. He wasn't strictly trespassing, but he didn't want to get caught, did he, especially not by whatever kind of person picked the middle of the night for a ride. Quickly he had turned his torch off and ducked behind a hedge, peering over it just a little and holding his breath. The hooves had got closer, with them came the creak of wheels, a carriage. A chill ran down his spine involuntarily but he didn't shiver. He pulled himself together and watched, waiting. This wasn't normal. This was a spice of abnormality to an otherwise ordinary day.

He waited as the wheels rattled closer, around the corner into view. A dark carriage, pulled by a horse with billowing black smoke in place of a head. He had almost laughed, thinking it had to be an illusion, a trick of the early morning shadows. For the briefest moment he had a clear view of the rider, a woman who sat controlling the reins. Was it called a rider when they were directing a carriage? Semantics aside, more importantly she had no head, like the horse, fog rising from her neck. In her arms, a beautiful head sat, an unforgettable face, and then the carriage carried on into the night.

Impulsively he followed it. That was who he was. Always curious. Always inquiring. He tailed it as far as the abandoned cottage, where he watched it - _her_ \- stable her horse and vanish inside. There he held off. It was common gossip at school that the house was haunted, and though Jim didn't believe in ghosts, he hadn't believed in dullahans until about ten minutes ago and so was inclined to caution. For now, at least.

He was on his way home when the second of those events found him, the stranger from Japan, who was for some reason carrying one of those swords from the cheaply-made ninja movies you saw on TV. He kept muttering away to himself in Japanese.

Jim wasn't an idiot. Far from it. He had come top in maths every year since starting secondary. He knew how to put two and two together. These events were linked. The question then became how could he profit from this?

"Excuse me?" He began, stepping out of the shadows like a vampire, or a villain from a fairytale. The Japanese man visibly jumped.

"Aaaah!" He screamed, waving the sword frantically with the all the poise and grace of a drowning bluebottle. "Leave now or I will be forced to use this ancient cursed blade!" His English was technically accurate, but highly idiosyncratic and eccentric. Mind you, a cursed blade would have been mundane by that night's standards.

"Are you lost?" Jim had asked, ever the public spirited citizen with absolutely no ulterior motives.

"No, no!" The man said, waving his hands. "Not that you'd be able to help if I was but I'm not so-" here, he stuck his tongue out, in a show of immaturity.

"And if I could?"

The man looked around covertly. "Alright. You wouldn't happen to have seen-"

"A woman with no head?" Jim finished casually. Once again the man jumped as though he had been shocked, then, recovering, started to point at Jim dramatically and shout.

"Esper, esper! Aaaaagh, you read my mind! What am I thinking now? Now? Ha! I have defeated you with my quick thinking!" The man's over-the-top reaction settled down and he leaned in closely. "Did you?"

"Read your mind? Please, I'm not that good."

"No! See a woman with no head around here?"

Jim smiled and folded his arms. "If I did...you want directions, right?" The man nodded furiously. "Sorry, it's gonna cost you." He clicked his tongue against his teeth and whistled.

"Damn!" The man frowned, folding his arms. Even this was conducted as though it were an elaborate gesture. "You're robbing me blind. I realise you haven't named a price yet, but whatever it is it's too high! I have a son to feed!"

"Really?" Jim narrowed his eyebrows suspiciously.

"Yes, really! He's waiting back at...never mind where! I'll have you know I resent your doubt!"

"How old is he?" Jim asked, feigning an interest in order to make small talk and try to trick this man into giving up more information.

The man beamed. "Four!" He replied, proudly.

"You left him alone aged four? Well, I can't say you'll be winning any parenting awards soon."

"Whaaaaat? It'll teach him independence. He needs to learn to stand on his own two feet sooner or later."

"Preferably at least ten years after he's learnt to _stand_."

"Ha! Hypocrite! Who are you to talk, your parents are so distracted they let you come sneaking out at this hour? You can't criticise me. _I_ happen to be a doctor."

Faced with the bizarre situation of arguing parenting with a lunatic, Jim rolled his eyes and decided to get the topic back onto business, fun though their tangent was. He made a show of checking his watch, adding a time-sensitive element to their deal.

"Do you want to know where the headless woman is or not, Dr…"

"Aaagh, Dr Kishitani, Shingen. But you don't need to remember that! You can forget this ever happened!" Jim fixed him with a look, and the man hung his head, dejected. "Fine. How much do you want?" Jim named his price and Dr Kishitani sighed. "I don't have time to haggle, dammit." He rifled through his wallet and threw the money at him. "Lead the way."

So he did. He showed the sword-wielding weirdo the way to the house and assisted him with what followed, bagging the head and carrying it back to the car, at which point the man drove off and was gone. During this time he learnt, in addition to the man's name, the name of the company he was working for, Nebula. He noted all of this down for future reference.

Jim wondered if they'd killed the dullahan. He wasn't sure. He headed back home and took a stolen lock of hair out of his pocket, and put it in a sealed container next to Carl Powers' stolen shoes, at the bottom of his wardrobe. After that he fell asleep. The next day he had school and he spent the day thinking of the previous night's events. He was intrigued by Nebula, by Dr Kishitani, by the dullahan. And so he found himself on the path to becoming the man he was now, for better or for worse. For better, he thought anyway.

Now he wondered what Sherlock would make of the whole thing. Probably he'd write the whole thing off as delusional. Poor Sherly, so fixed and rigid in his worldview, free of those impossible possibilities, sending him spinning off in directions he never planned to go. But not Jim. Jim knew all these things. He became _himself_ , and that brought him to where he was now, on the precipice awaiting a fall.

When that day came, he sure as hell would drag Sherlock Holmes down with him.

‡

Anyway, that was all history. Whether that was the cause of who he became or not, he would never know. Frankly he didn't care. He was James Moriarty, consulting criminal, working with everyone from the lowest of the low to smuggling rings to yakuza, to multinational corporations like Nebula, whom he took an interest in. He researched them, from the 1930s Flying Pussyfoot incident to their recent forays into Yagiri Pharmaceuticals and human testing. And their other, more esoteric interests. He kept a careful eye on Nebula.

So when the job came up he decided to look into it further. It didn't instantly ring alarm bells, but it should have.

Nebula had been having problems on the Yagiri Pharmaceuticals side - they were approaching a merger and wanted everything to be spic and span before they brought the Japanese company into the fold. The problems seemingly stemmed from young Seiji Yagiri stealing a particular head from the labs. This was followed by an incident with a girl stalking him, who was presumed dead and forced to get plastic surgery, in a twist of coincidence, at the hands of Dr Kishitani's son. Seiji's sister Namie took charge, resuming possession of the head. She was supposed to return it to the labs, ready for the merger. Instead she had vanished. Nebula requested Moriarty's help locating Namie Yagiri and, of course, the head. He took a look at the photos and immediately booked flights, business class.

This case was personal.

He recognised that head. Of course he did. Clapping his hands together excitably he laughed. How appropriate that this case featured the same two elements from his past, tying into that incident in his youth. He was getting excited, making his plans, gleefully getting his house in order. God, he hadn't been this excited since he first heard about Sherlock, but then he hadn't considered Sherlock inconveniencing him to this degree. Finally, he contacted Nebula assuring them he would be attending in person. This case was of pressing interest. Oh, and he put in a call to Sebastian Moran, asking him to keep an eye on certain elements of the business while he was away in Japan.

"Could you have our Tokyo informants send me their relevant files, those pertaining to Ikebukuro, please? Something for me to brush up on on the flight. Alright, ta, talk later. Bye!" With that, he hung up.

From what he knew about the area, Ikebukuro was a hotbed of young delinquent gangs and local yakuza (several of whom he'd had dealings with in the past), and the files confirmed this. It had its share of urban legends and strangeness, _including_ , he noted, after a session of googling, an invisible online colour gang, that he promptly joined after weedling the password out of someone else; and an allegedly headless rider on a black bike, who the previous gang claimed as a member along with someone called 'Heiwajima Shizuo' and a few other parties. Reading the files while nursing a glass of excellent whiskey, he rehearsed and practised his Japanese, which was serviceable but required a little studying that the flight would resolve. So he scrolled through his phone, reading the files and noting details that repeated between accounts.

'ex-assassins running a Russian sushi restaurant…'

'the Slasher'

'black bike'

'the Dollars'

And an interesting one: 'Whatever you do, avoid blond bartenders RUN AS FAR AS POSSIBLE I SPEAK FROM EXPERIENCE'.

Many of the emails, except that last one and a few others, were sourced to a particular informant, a dealer in information who cropped up in other emails as someone deeply suspicious. 'Orihara Izaya', Izaya Orihara. According to Nebula he was a person of interest in this case, an excellent information dealer who operating out of multiple apartments in Shinjuku. He would be the first port of call in this investigation. Then maybe he'd pay the Awakusu-kai a visit or have someone do it on his behalf, pull some strings with them, alongside other outlets like the Medei and Asuki. On another note, he wanted to look into the Black Bike and the Dollars more closely while over there, the former out of the same personal interest that drove him to Ikebukuro in the first place, the latter for fun. They seemed like a laugh.

After reading over all this two or three times, he got bored and decided to watch some amusing children's cartoons for the rest of the flight. Heathrow to Narita International Airport. Eleven hours 35 minutes in total. It was driving him insane. He regretted coming already.

Sliding down in his seat, he slouched so far he was almost on the floor, then started fiddling with the buttons controlling tilt. That occupied him for all of five minutes. After that he resorted to flicking pellets at the half-asleep businessman opposite until the man woke up and all the magic went out of it. He looked at his watch.

6 hours left. Great.


	2. The Buying and Selling of Information

**Chapter 1 (The Buying and Selling Of Information is an Art Form)**

The plane landed just as it was getting dark and he stepped out into the evening air, a faint smile already on his face. He was excited. The fun was about to begin. Hopefully. You never knew. Even Sherlock Holmes was proving to be more _boring_ than initially anticipated. So predictable, soooo moral, in his own funny little way. So sickening.

There was a car waiting for Jim and he got into it, stretching his legs out on the back seat, leaning his head against the window so that when the car started moving, his head vibrated and he could make silly childish noises. Since that meeting with Dr Kishitani he had matured and come to appreciate the value of being an utter child. It was who he was. 'An out-of-control five-year-old with a really, really nice suit', someone had described Jim Moriarty as once, and he found it flattering even though it had been intended as an insult. You couldn't offend him that easily. Why, if he went home and cried every time someone called him a mean name, he'd never have got anywhere. Carl Powers would still be alive, competing in the Olympics like the sickening fuck he was. Ah, for all the ifs and might-have-beens. Thank God he had murdered Carl, that was all he had to say. He'd saved the world from something far worse than himself: a swimmer with an ego.

He drifted off for the major portion of the drive, waking up when they were pretty much nearly there. He took his phone out and called the information broker to set a meeting.

" _Hello? Orihara Izaya speaking. Who is this?_ "

"Jim Moriarty. You may have heard of me, if you have ears," Jim replied in Japanese and he heard laughter on the other end of the phone.

" _Mr Moriarty! What a surprise to hear directly from you! Did something happen? No, don't tell me, is it Nebula?"_ His pronunciation of Nebula sounded like 'Nebra', and his voice sounded intensely cheerful, if not outrightly malicious at the same time. It was a tone Jim understood, vicious friendliness; it was a tone he had _used_. The difference was that he flitted, between moods, between attitudes, like a summer storm. This man was the sort to always sound poisonously upbeat, delighted by everything, including the most distasteful parts of human nature. What was it the file on him said? That he observed humans for a hobby, that he claimed to love them all as a species? What a weirdo.

"Interesting idea," Moriarty replied. "We can talk about it further in person."

" _You're in Japan? I was under the impression you never visited anywhere directly. This_ _must_ _be serious._ "

Serious? Not so much. Personal? That was more like it, but he wasn't about to let that juicy tidbit slip to someone with _that_ reputation.

"When can I drop by for a chat? Is tonight okay with you?"

" _My my, your Japanese is good isn't it?"_ Though he was young, Izaya had mastered the art of gleeful condescension already. " _I'm finishing up with something right now, so any time within the next few hours. How do you want to do this? The Awakusu-kai prefer rolling meetings."_

"Oh, you know, a friendly visit," Jim matched the information broker's tone precisely, in a way that was clearly not friendly at all. "Which of your numerous apartments are you in now, or would you rather I guessed?"

" _I'm sure you know_ _exactly_ _where I am_ ," Izaya responded " _I look forward to meeting you."_

"Likewise. And, understand this, Mr Orihara, if you try anything I will have you carefully eviscerated and your entrails fed to crows. Are we clear?"

" _Naturally_." Even under threat, that voice showed no signs of anything other than blithe contentment, however Jim knew the man it belonged to was far from stupid. " _Well, I'd better finish here._ _Bye-bye!_ " The farewell was in mock-childish English, seemingly playful. Moriarty chuckled. He was finding this trip amusing, very much so.

He was interested to see how it would turn out.

 **‡**

Izaya slid away from his desk and fixed Namie with a look. She glared back.

"Who was that?" She asked, arms folded sternly.

He didn't answer, not directly. Instead he said: "You're going to need to get out of the way for a bit. We can't have Nebula realising you're here right now."

"Nebula?" Her head jerked. "They're from Nebula?"

"Not really. His name's James Moriarty, known also as Jim. He's an independent authority, Irish originally. Sometimes he sells information, sometimes he's...you know how Mr Akabayashi acts as a fixer affiliated with the Awakusu-kai?" Namie nodded. "Moriarty's similar, only on a global scale. You could say he works for mankind as a whole. When you can't solve a problem any other way, you go to Moriarty and hire him. You heard about the recent Chinese smuggling ring, the Black Lotus? _They_ were in his pocket, until Sherlock Holmes got involved. That's the scale he works on."

"Sherlock Holmes," Namie snorted with disdain. "What kind of ridiculous name is that?"

"He's an English 'consulting detective', apparently. I follow his associate's blog. It makes for an interesting read. Dr John Watson...I suggest you check it out sometime. Anyway, Moriarty's the string puller. I suppose you could call him the master puppeteer, the spider at the centre of an untraceable, invisible web. I'm guessing Nebula asked him to look into the head's disappearance, but I never thought he'd show up personally for something like this. He's notoriously private, communicating through proxies, stand-ins and anonymous chatrooms."

"Sounds like you two would get on great," muttered Namie under her breath.

Izaya ignored this slight and continued talking, more to himself than to his employee. "So why is he here personally? He must have an interest in the case. Who knows, he might have known Celty back in Ireland." He looked at the disembodied head floating in the jar on his desk and smirked, picking it up and considering carefully where to conceal it. After some thought he slipped it into a cupboard under his desk, behind some files. His smile grew wider, and Namie rolled her eyes.

"Whatever. I don't care. I'll stay out of the way until he's gone."

"Thank you." Izaya spun around on his chair a few times and stopped, facing the window, waiting for his visitor to arrive.

Meanwhile Namie exited the room and went back to dreaming of her brother.

 **‡**

Of course, Moriarty had easily pinpointed Izaya's current location and his driver had pulled up outside the apartment block. He exited the car and headed in, adjusting his cuffs absently. The door was already open so he headed straight up to the thirteenth floor, taking the lift directly to the information broker's centre of operations; or one of those centres anyway, since he moved between apartments on a weekly basis. A more superstitious man would have noted the thirteenth floor; Jim wondered if that had been chosen intentionally or if it was just a coincidence. Either way it made him smile. He emerged from the lift with a bounce in his step, waltzing his way up to the apartment door and knocking playfully.

"Knock knock!" He called out, in English, his voice high-pitched and sing-song.

"Who's there?" From the inside, Izaya replied in kind, answering the door with a smile and inviting the consulting criminal in and slipping back into Japanese straight away. "Mr Moriarty! Such an honour to meet you in person. In fact, it's a little scary!"

Jim studied the notorious information broker carefully. There was a wicked grin on his face, a glint in his eyes, a lethal narrowing of his eyebrows all of which indicated anything but fear. Those were eyes that never stopped smiling, and that was a smile that was as deadly as a knife, a knife that could reassure you even as it slipped between your ribs. It was a smile that could destroy. Moriarty noted it, the cunning in those eyes, and knew immediately this was a man he couldn't trust, and so he returned the expression.

Izaya was as young as he sounded, early-to-mid-twenties and handsome in a particular way, with short black hair. He wore dark trousers and a long-sleeved black v-neck. According to files, all of this coupled with his demeanour had a polarising effect: he had his fans, mostly young women who hero-worshipped him; and then his detractors, of whom there were many. He apparently had an explosive rivalry with someone who had attended the same high-school, that occasionally turned Ikebukuro into a war-zone, hence the safer location of Shinjuku for Shady McShade Central.

Stepping inside, Moriarty slipped his shoes off and followed the information broker over to the sofa.

"Nice place you have here," Moriarty remarked, swapping languages now his little joke was complete. "Are all of your lairs this pretty?"

There was a Go board on the table laid out with shogi, chess and othello pieces in a seemingly random pattern that no doubt meant something to him, each game's pieces presumably representing factions he was playing off against one another. Very dramatic. It had a certain style to it.

"Lairs. Like I'm some sort of supervillain." Izaya's smile somehow managed to widen. "Are you sure you wouldn't prefer English?"

"Oh no, I'm quite alright," replied Moriarty. "Interesting game, that." Here he gestured at the board. Izaya followed his finger an laughed.

"That? It's just a thought exercise. For this city. Nothing important." He waved a dismissive hand, effortlessly casual. An amateur might even have thought he was telling the truth, he was very, very good at this. "So what did you want to talk to me about?"

"Direct. I like that," Moriarty raised a mockingly flirtatious eyebrow, and for a split second Izaya seemed taken aback, almost imperceptibly but definitely a little surprised. Score one to Jim. "Anyway, as you guessed, I'm here on behalf of Nebula. They seem to have misplaced some things of importance."

"Oh?" Izaya asked innocuously. "What did they lose?"

"A young woman and a severed head." Jim shrugged, observing the information broker's face intently. There was very little reaction, a flicker of an eyebrow but nothing particularly telling. Reaching into his pockets, Jim produced photographs.

"Ah, I know her. Yagiri Namie, was heading Yagiri Pharmaceuticals research division I think. Last seen in Ikebukuro, at the Dollars meetup."

Dollars. That name that had been rising in recent reports. Some informants doubted they existed. They operated in the shadows, invisible and colourless, apparently. Didn't they claim the Black Bike as a member too? The Black Bike, the Headless Rider, whatever you wanted to call them. That was the only real reason Moriarty had taken any interest in the ragtag group of juvenile delinquents at all, that and the fact they seemed intriguing. The myth that reminded him of his own roots. The head.

"Have you heard of the Dollars, Mr Moriarty?" Izaya interjected, cutting into his thoughts.

"In passing." Never give too much away, that was the trick that was buying information. It applied to selling it too. The whole thing was an elaborate dance. An art form, even. "Teenage thugs, from what I gather. I didn't think they were the kind to abduct people, now."

"No no, Miss Yagiri left the meeting unhindered. It was only after that she disappeared. I don't think the Dollars are involved specifically."

"And the head?"

"I'll keep an eye out. You know, maybe you should talk to Celty. She's looking for a head too, though, granted, her case is rather different."

That piqued his interest. "Celty wouldn't happen to be the Headless Rider I've been hearing so much about, would she?" Cogs were whirring. If the Black Bike was part of the Dollars, the Dollars were unlikely to have the head. While they could have it and Celty not know, that spoke of a level of organisation far beyond some half-arsed assortment of idiots online. It was reasonable to conclude that the Dollars did not, therefore, have the head, or Namie Yagiri. Moriarty was starting to think that just maybe Namie hadn't been disappeared at all and had fled with the head before Nebula came for her, concluding that awful business with her brother. No, not maybe, he _suspected_ that was what had happened. Or perhaps the Headless Rider had succeeded in retrieving her head and Izaya Orihara didn't know yet. Even if, ultimately, Celty proved to be useless, he needed to meet with her anyway to rule that option out.

Like he'd pass up an opportunity to meet with a dullahan face to facelessness.

Once again he wondered what Sherlock would say to all this. Something terribly clever and facetious, undoubtedly, and oh-so-annoying with it, as always.

"Yes, that's the one." Izaya beamed. "Celty Sturluson. She works around here as a transporter. Would you like her number?"

"If it's no problem." Moriarty wasn't so much asking as demanding, all the while playing it off with a faux-nonchalant shrug. The information broker noticed this and his smile remained fixed, eyes flashing with the same wickedness as he scrolled through his phone and jotted down the number, writing the name of its owner with a flourish. "An unusual name, that, Celty Sturluson."

"Well, she does have no head, so really her name is the least unusual thing about her." Izaya pointed out. "Anything else you wanted to ask me?"

"Where's the best place for me to have dinner?" Jim asked immediately.

Izaya snickered. "Russia Sushi's always entertaining. Say hi to Simon from me if you do go there. Oh, but watch out for Shizu-chan." Despite using a seemingly affectionate pet-name, to refer to something that would normally have sounded endearing, Izaya's expression soured and his tone audibly seethed with bitterness. "He's a demon. Not literally," he clarified, in case of confusion, because of course this city was that sort of place. "No, he's just exceptionally unpleasant. It's amazing how unpleasant he really is. Avoid blond bartenders, but that's just a rule of the city, common sense. If you set out to pick a fight with Shizuo, you'd be a lot more foolish than I thought. And I don't think you're foolish, Mr Moriarty, which is why I'm telling you this now, free of charge. I'm nothing if not generous."

He was as generous as a shark, this smile superficially one of kindness but nobody older than ten would ever mistake this man for anything but what he was, a carnivore waiting to eat you alive.

Which was nice. It was so rare to meet someone so basically venomous, a pettier, young Japanese version of himself. Seeing Izaya made Jim feel _amused_.

As for his advice, he had heard it echoed in previous reports, though none had pressed the issue. He recalled the name 'Heiwajima Shizuo' from reports about the Dollars, but had never seen it put together with the mystery of the blond bartender everyone seemed to avoid instinctively, mostly due to the fact it didn't really interest him that much. Not when there was potentially a dullahan haunting the streets. Now that was much sexier. He was going to focus on that.

"About your fee…" Moriarty began. "While you've been very useful, I don't consider this job complete unless you locate either the woman or the head, preferably both. I'll pay you a fraction up front but the rest…" he pulled a ridiculous face "You have to earn."

Izaya nodded, not attempting to negotiate. "What brought you here personally, Mr Moriarty? I'm sure there must be a reason. You don't seem the type to come into the open for something so small-scale."

There were many reasons, all of them stemming back to that incident, to the night he should have stayed in bed and didn't. His history with Nebula, the presence of that head with that face, a face he recognised from back then. All of that. But he said none of this. Instead he smiled and replied cheerfully:

"Maybe I fancied a holiday. I've been told I can be quite capricious sometimes. Do I have to have a reason?"

Izaya was quiet for a moment, thinking this over, then he chuckled. "That sounds about right. I'll keep an eye out for the head and for Miss Yagiri, if there's any news, I'll contact you. It's been a real pleasure meeting you. Enjoy the rest of your holiday!"

They sorted the fee and Moriarty left, still working through what he knew. He would consult the Awakusu-kai tomorrow, at some point he needed to arrange a meeting with this Celty Sturluson. Izaya claimed the Dollars weren't involved, but they warranted investigation. And right now, he decided he wanted to pay a visit to the (in)famous Russia Sushi. He had his own suspicions about who it was that owned that place. Drakon's organisation, or former members of it. Simon sounded a lot like Semyon, didn't it? If it was who he was thinking of, Russia Sushi would inarguably be one of the safest places in Ikebukuro.

Perfect for dinner.

Besides, didn't Izaya say it was always entertaining?

Getting back in his car, Moriarty gave his driver directions and sat back for the ride.

 **‡**

Namie re-entered the main room after Moriarty had left, to find her employer sat at his desk studying the head curiously.

"What a liar you are," she humphed. "I'm surprised he believed a word you had to say."

Izaya opened the tank, reached into it, pulling the head out and tossing it into the air like a basketball, catching it again on its descent. He did this often. Perhaps right now he was enjoying his deception of the man some called the Napoleon of crime, revelling in it.

"Actually I'm surprised too," he admitted. "That went better than expected."

"Do you think he's really here on vacation?" Namie asked shrewdly.

"Of course not. He has his reasons. Everyone who comes to this city does. He seemed quite interested when I mentioned Celty. I wonder if they really did know each other back in Ireland. Either way it doesn't matter what his reasons are-"

"Because you'll love him as a human?" Namie snorted. "Pathetic."

"Isn't it?" Snickered Izaya, then went back to playing with the head, throwing it as high as he could an spinning around on his chair in delight.

Pulling a face, Namie turned away in disgust. The problem with trying to insult someone like Izaya was they took it as a compliment. Namie wondered if Moriarty was the same. She contemplated calling him and telling him Izaya had lied, but she knew doing such a thing would invariably come off badly for her, with Nebula and all. So she did nothing.

There would be a time to act later.


	3. A Mostly Irrelevant Interjection

Russia Sushi turned out to be a perfectly charming little restaurant, lavishly decorated and a bit pricey but lovely all the same, despite serving less traditional dishes and oh yeah, _definitely_ being run by former assassins. A six-foot something Afro-Russian who was built like a brick outhouse was recognisable wherever he went, even if he was now dressed as a sushi chef, handing out flyers to persuade people to come into the restaurant, his Japanese broken and unusual. In all likelihood this was one of the most dangerous men Jim had ever been near, in terms of pure strength he rivalled the Golem, yet here he was working as a hawker, his name spoken of kindly and treated with the highest level of respect. No one seemed to dislike Simon. To be fair, he was...well, exceptionally friendly, that was an apt description. _Friendly._

"You want sushi? Sushi good. Special offer for tourists. Two for a price of three."

Jim raised his eyebrows dubiously and smirked. "Don't you mean three for two?"

"Oh, of course. I mix up numbers." Simon beamed proudly, ushering him inside with the look of a man who knew his mistake and quite possibly knew way more Japanese than he was letting on. "We have customer!"

This was when he got a good look around the restaurant and came to all of those prior conclusions. Taking a seat at the counter he drank in the atmosphere; late, quiet, but in the honey-gold light of Russia Sushi there were guests even now. Actually, you could strike quiet off the list, these guests were rather loud.

"All I'm saying is that with that boob-to-waist ratio I'm certain she'd get stuck going through narrow doorways-"

"Huh? Don't complain about it Yumacchi!"

"I'm not! Just picture it, a beautiful erotic maid with boobs the size of beach-balls straining desperately to fit through a door!"

"You guys, I'm trying to eat. Can you quit talking about that stuff, you're putting me off my food."

Jim looked over and saw a group of four young people, two of them rather excitable as they chattered away. The first speaker was male and his eyes were blissfully closed, the second female, and the third, the irate one, was a relatively tall man - not compared to Simon, but still - with a hat sat on the table next to him. He was eyeing his friends with a look of profound irritation.

The fourth person, a man with slightly longer hair an a waistcoat, had fallen asleep, or was at least pretending to have to escape the conversation his companions were having.

"Aw, Dotachin! You're being no fun!" The young woman humphed. "It's not like we're in public! We're indoors!"

"Yes!" Her comrade-in-sheer-strangeness declared. "We're _not_ in public, so we can be as perverted as we like!"

"Please don't." 'Dotachin' muttered, annoyed. "Also, there's that guy at the counter. He speaks Japanese, I overheard him correcting Simon on his way in." Jim glanced away, making a convincing show out of not-listening. "And quit calling me Dotachin already! How many times have I told you to cut that out?"

'Dotachin' - derived from the word for nosy. Understandable he didn't like it then. Funny. Jim was still on the side of the two otaku, who were ultimately more hilarious overall.

The two aforementioned otaku stared at one another, calculating this. In unison both of them said: "47." "48." They looked at each other in confusion.

"Where are you getting the other one from? I thought we agreed 47!"

"You know, the other day, at the meet-up!"

"Oh yeah, you're right. Sorry, 48 times!"

"That damn Orihara Izaya," Dotachin said under his breath, barely audibly, and Moriarty's ears perked up. That and their mention of the meetup led him to believe...these idiots were part of that nebulous entity known as the Dollars? "You can never live down one of his nicknames. I feel sorry for Shizuo."

Shizuo, Shizu-chan. There was that name again. The great and dreaded blond bartender. Honestly, who cared? Jim drifted from their conversation and turned to his food, ordering some salmon roe. He kept an ear out in case the Dollars said anything important, but decided to enjoy his food instead.

He wasn't surprised Izaya was involved somehow with the Dollars. It had been clear at their meeting the information broker knew more than he was letting on, which wasn't strange in that profession. In fact it was one of the prerequisites. Also unsurprising was the fact they disliked Izaya, found him infuriating. Jim knew that feeling. He had been told he was deeply irritating before now. Sherlock was very annoying, and Jim hadn't even met him properly.

Yet.

"You like?" Simon inquired, watching Jim eat. "It good, yes?"

"Yes, it is actually," he replied, slightly surprised it tasted so delicious given that the chef, a pale grey-haired man in the kitchen, was totally an ex-Russian assassin. And so was 'Simon', Semyon, whatever, the point was Russia was not generally known for its sushi, and professional killers not normally hired for their cooking skills. "My compliments to the chef."

"Did you hear that?" Simon hollered through to the kitchen, louder than was necessary. "He compliment you!" The chef said something in response to that, something quietly in Russian that Moriarty didn't quite catch, but it made Simon laugh anyway. "You should tip, yes, tip generously. Tipping good for the soul."

Once again, the Afro-Russian giant was subtly angling for money, in a manner that sounded so innocent but came from a place of intelligence. How much Japanese did Simon _really_ speak?

"By the way, Orihara Izaya sends his regards," Jim sang chirpily, wondering how the big Russian _former hitman_ would react.

He didn't expect him to grin. People didn't grin when Izaya was mentioned. They cursed him, they ran for the hills, they didn't grin. Actually he did almost expect it in a way, Simon's overly-friendly nature being as it was; exactly opposite to Izaya's own friendliness in that Simon was being totally genuine even if he was trying to get cash, while Izaya's brand of niceness had _teeth._

"Oh, Izaya. Yes, I know Izaya. He always fighting with Shizuo. Fighting not good. Eat sushi instead."

"Shizuo?" Moriarty took a sip of tea and weighed up whether or not to probe further. Of course he would. It was dangerous not to know all the facts, when they were as potentially important as this. "You know, I keep hearing that name. Who is that?"

"Shizuo-o?" Simon stretched out the final syllable in his odd little way. "He a good guy. Do not pick fight."

"'Fighting not good'," echoed Jim "'Eat sushi instead'."

"Exactly!" Simon said, heading back outside to try and attract some more last-minute customers.

On the other side of their restaurant the Dollars were finishing their meal, trying to nudge their sleeping friend awake.

"Togusa," Dotachin, or whatever his actual name was said, and the other man awoke with a start. "Come on. Time to get going."

"Did I miss anything?"

"Just those two being creeps. Nothing new."

"Good thing I slept through it," Togusa chuckled, and the group gradually filtered out, saying their goodbyes to the chef and bidding Simon farewell. If the Dollars had anything to do with the missing head, it was probably a different faction, but he'd look into it. As such, there was no united front for the Dollars, so it was difficult to tell whether or not there were hidden depths who were hiding behind the main Dollars to do things like abduct Namie Yagiri and steal the head. Thinking about it, he believed Izaya when he said the Dollars didn't have Namie or the head. That would require a level of actual organisation they simply didn't have, from what little he'd seen online and in real life.

Suspects, then. The yakuza, perhaps, the Awakusu or the higher-ups in the Medei, or maybe the Asuki. Yodogiri Jinnai was always ominous, but if the Yodogiri Shining corporation had the head it would have shown up on the market by now, and he'd checked before flying out. Then there was the Headless Rider, of whom there were clips online, shot on mobile phones. Did the dullahan want her head back badly enough to go through Namie? Had she succeeded?

Was Miss Yagiri alive?

He considered all these things on the way back to his hotel, having indeed tipped generously at Russia Sushi and left quietly into the night, Simon's goodbyes and promises of offers still ringing in his ears.

Sebastian had emailed him to see how he was doing, which was rather sweet of him. He emailed back, reminding his second of his various responsibilities, the side projects he needed to keep track of, all the upcoming schemes.

' _Remember to contact Janus Cars, and get in touch with the gallery about that painting, make sure they start moving things along quickly'_

' _How's the headhunt?'_ Sebastian quipped, and Jim smirked.

' _Going well, I think. I have some leads. If I don't find it before next week, I'll leave it to our office and bail. This is only entertainment, after all. There are more important things bubbling to the surface. See you later x'_

He said goodbye and headed to his hotel room to get some sleep. Busy day tomorrow, meeting urban legends, having his people question yakuza and the like. It was going to be such fun.

'Avoid blond bartenders', he reminded himself absently, smiling slightly to himself, before he drifted off and fell asleep.


	4. Dullahan and Tetris and Boredom

**Chapter 3**

The next day he had organised a meeting with the Awakusu-kai for one of his usual stand-ins later on, he would have to monitor it personally via earpiece or something, but first he was getting his curiosity out of the way and so he called the number Izaya had given him. It was only when he was answered with silence that it occurred to him - 'oh wait, people who don't have heads obviously can't talk. Silly me'.

Anyway. Since the dullahan was Irish, he decided to speak to her in English as a matter of course. "Hello? I assume this is Celty Sturluson, correct? I'm Jim Moriarty. We need to discuss your _fascinating_ head situation. I think we can be of use to one another. Please text me if you'd like to arrange a meeting." He hung up then, and the text came through almost instantaneously, asking to meet as soon as possible, somewhere quiet. Celty's appearance made sure of that. Thankfully, Moriarty had an office in the area, somewhere relatively unassuming, a few floors up from some debt collection agency. Celty knew where he meant anyway, apparently she had a friend who worked there for the agency. Somehow it was nice to know death-dealing fairies had friends. It was endearing. There was hope for them all.

He arrived at the office early, passing a man with dreadlocks on the way up. While waiting for Celty to arrive, he started a game of tetris on the computer, which he kept up with very well until she arrived, pausing it as the shadowy figure walked in, black riding outfit clinging to her slight, relatively androgynous form, yellow-cat eared helmet concealing any head or lack thereof.

As she entered the room, the air felt like it changed, becoming very _surreal_ , thoroughly mysterious, or maybe he needed to open a window or whatever. Point was it was exhilarating, seeing an urban legend in real, everyday life. That feeling he'd felt as a child came back, a distant, ethereal feeling he had been looking for since he first encountered it as a child. A smile toyed at his lips.

"Well _hello_ ," he whistled. "Miss Sturluson, it's my pleasure."

The dark slender figure pulled out a typy-thingy and her fingers moved swiftly across it. Either she actually couldn't speak on account of being headless, or that was real commitment to the role.

'What do you know about me?' she typed.

Moriarty shrugged lazily. "I encountered you once, back in Ireland. Long time ago. Do you remember the incident?" He kind of hoped she didn't, since he'd contributed to the whole 'missing head' situation in something of a big way.

The cat-helmet shook from side to side frantically. 'My memories are in my head' she replied. 'When my head was stolen, I lost them'.

He remembered the incident well. He had assisted in it. He had helped to cause this entire cock-up with Nebula et cetera, everything that came with it. Realising this, he swelled with pride in his inherent ability to be a total fuck, even as a child, when he was unaware of full context. _He_ had personally contributed to sincerely fucking shit up for multiple people and of that he was pleased.

"About that...see, the company that _had_ your head suddenly _doesn't_. And they're wondering where it is, see, so they asked little old me to lend a hand. You wouldn't happen to have seen it, would you? Since I know you've been looking for it, you're one of the lead suspects."

Urgently, the dullahan shook her head - helmet, rather - again. 'I wish I had. I've been looking for it for twenty years. I know that Yagiri Pharmaceuticals had it because they used it to make this girl look like me. But...if they don't have it anymore, who does?'

He shrugged. "Search me." He didn't think she was lying, her body language came across as very flustered and _human_. Even without a face to study, her physicality said it all, and so her words themselves seemed innocent. "I was wondering what _you'd_ heard. Mr Orihara said you act as a courier around here. Perhaps you've heard something while working.

'Oh? Izaya told you about me? I suppose it's only to be expected. He probably knows more about this than me.'

"I'm sure he does indeed," Moriarty said, thinking about that devilish grin and the cunning that hid behind it. How much did that information broker _really_ know?

'Um...was there anything else you wanted to ask?'

"Namie Yagiri. You know anything about where she is?"

Celty shrugged. 'She was at the Dollars meeting. I saw her with,' she hesitated, evidently querying what to type, how much to give away. Protecting someone. Possibly the kid who Namie went to meet with, some guy with an ostentatious name mentioned in passing in connection with the Dollars. Which meant Celty didn't know how much Moriarty knew and wanted to protect the poor child. 'With some security' she finished, confirming his suspicions. How cute. The question remained - did the Dollars have anything to do with her disappearance, or was that an indirect consequence?

And where was that bloody head?

On that note, Jim decided to give in to his childish curiosity and ask the obvious question, to hell with it. "You don't mind taking your helmet off, do you? I mean, you probably get this a lot, but I flew all the way here and wouldn't want to go home without seeing why this area's so famous, would I now?" He had to ask, memories of the black fog bubbling up in his mind. The fog that rose choking out of a headless neck. It was curiosity that spurred him to ask, morbid curiosity, as if once he looked the bringer of death in her faceless figurative face again he would be able to die with ease if and when the need arose. When the time came he would embrace the fall and drag Sherlock Holmes down with him if it were the last thing he did; which was entirely plausible. In fact, he _intended_ it to be. If he couldn't destroy him any other way, that would be his fatal solution to their final problem.

'If you really want', Celty replied, removing the frankly adorable cat-ear helmet slowly. He watched, knowing what he would see but still delighted by the otherworldliness presented before him, especially pleased that he was the one in power, not a kid hiding behind a hedge, or an adult wielding a sword (badly). He was in control. He gazed into the dark smoke and undoubtedly the smoke gazed back, _Celty_ gazed back. A quote from Nietzsche sprung to mind, then promptly sprung out again like Tigger on acid. Nietzsche. _Ugh_.

He paid Celty a trifling amount for her time and resumed his game of tetris, albeit only briefly.

There was a noise from a floor or so below, an inhuman yell of fury, accompanied by a loud crash. Jim paused his game, intrigued. None of his own employees, buzzing mindlessly around the main office like flies, so much as raised an eyebrow. Celty meanwhile halted momentarily, midway through putting her helmet on, and after she did she shook it with a sort-of-but-not-quite sigh of what, disappointment? No; inevitability. Inevitability. She _anticipated_ this might happen.

'I should be off' she typed. 'Goodbye'. With that, the dullahan left as silently as she had arrived. The chaos downstairs fell to a hush, and silence fell there too. Going to the window, Moriarty watched the fairy emerge, get back on her bike and disappear, the shrill whinny of a horse cutting through the silence like a knife through butter as she rode away. He raised his eyebrows, pulled a face and checked his watch. His double's meeting with the Awakusu-kai would be occurring soon. He should listen in.

As he fished through his pockets for his headphones (stupid things, always getting tangled who thought that was a good idea?), he overheard a conversation taking place in the main office, some of his employees gossiping in subdued tones. At first he thought they might be talking about him, assuming he either a) couldn't hear them, b) couldn't understand their language well enough or c) both in tandem. Closer listening, however, revealed something far more telling.

"Man, he scares the shit out of me."

"I know, right? I bumped into him one time on the way up and I swear if that dreadlocked guy wasn't there to save me I wouldn't be here now."

"I once saw Heiwajima Shizuo punch a guy so hard he flew halfway down the road and his clothes came flying off."

"I don't even doubt that. I almost got caught in the crosshairs of one of his fights with that information broker and a streetlamp nearly took my head off."

"Scary shit, isn't it?"

"I know, right?"

They moved their conversation on to more ordinary topics - but really, for this city, their prior conversation wasn't abnormal at all, they were discussing an everyday hazard that residents of Ikebukuro encountered. This was normal. However, when they started discussing sports instead their boss soon lost interest, tuning in to the meeting his double was having with the Awakusu-kai. He'd made deals with Shiki, Akabayashi and Aozaki, with some occasional contact with the boss and his son, all through this proxy of course; he'd never met any of them in person. He knew some of the friction between local groups was caused by 'the Red Devil' Akabayashi allegedly killing one of the leaders. The usual. Same old, same old.

And from what he heard, they knew very little about the head, although he was taken aback that Shiki knew the Headless Rider, it made sense given her work as a transporter. Izaya's name also cropped up, no surprises there. Aside from that...nothing. Bored out of his skull, Jim ordered his stand-in to pay the yakuza to keep an eye out for the head. What other sources could he utilise?

Google.

Ah well. At least it wasn't Bing. For that he could be grateful.

His interesting in the case was waning, fast. He'd head home soon if nothing came of it, leave the silly tedious bits to his pawns over here and resume messing with Sherlock's pretty little head. Sitting back down at his desk he logged in to the Dollars website and decided to do a bit of research. First he searched 'Headless Rider', but only found pages a) talking about them in awe or b) bragging about them being a Dollars member. Sometimes both. There was a video of the Rider at that meetup, but it wasn't clear what was actually going on. She seemed to be riding vertically down a building. For literally no reason. With a scythe. Because why not? To be fair, she was a dullahan, _if the shoe fits..._

He decided to look into the meeting itself, however nobody knew anything important. Their orders were specifically to stare at anyone not looking at their phone, to intimidate the Yagiri Pharmaceuticals lot. These orders came from the mysterious creator, whose identity was unknown by its members - some thought it was Izaya, others claimed the real founder was more mysterious. How would they react if they knew their founder was a harmless kid, Jim wondered, then moved on to looking into 'Dotachin', learning the man's name was Kyohei Kadota and he was well-known and respected as the public face of the Dollars. Those two otakus with him were actually nicknamed 'the Torture Team, and had a notorious fondness for fire that had helped destroy a local gang, scarring the leader for life.

The sleeping man was just the guy who drove their van.

Was nobody in this place even halfway normal by the outside world's standards? This coming from Jim Moriarty himself. Why hadn't he found out about this place sooner? True, he'd always heard of it in passing and thought it sounded like the butt of one of God's sick jokes. Operations of all kinds were always getting held up by freak complications: excuses ranging from Slasher attacks to feuding colour gangs, to stray vending machines that apparently didn't know the law of gravity was _a thing_ and had taken it upon themselves to come flying into the office and wreck all of their computers in one fell swoop. For such a small area it had caused an absurd amount of problems. He'd assumed they were hyperbolic.

He read up on these 'colour gangs', those that still existed and those that had since been eradicated. He found out information about the local cops and noted down a detailed history of the Slasher dating all the way back to the Edo period. In between this, he played tetris and snake and pacman (classic timewasting), then clicked onto something else. He hadn't been taking this job seriously - he never took _anything_ seriously, and now he was re-examining his previous assumptions.

This _wasn't_ a delightful, endearing location in comparison to his usual haunts. This was a place of mystery. Always nice, wasn't it, to have an element of intrigue to the day? Always _fun_. You had to stay positive about it, there was no point in being concerned by such silly little things. No matter how ridiculous it got you just had to chill out and roll with it.

Play the game.

Resuming his search through the Dollars website, he finally checked out the rumours about this Shizuo Heiwajima person. Almost immediately he found a photo - of a skinny blond guy in blue sunglasses wielding a motorcycle over his head, a wild grin of destruction on his face. In the background, Jim recognised the dreadlocked man he'd seen on the way up. He was facepalming.

It didn't look photoshopped. The man in the photo didn't look anywhere near strong enough to lift such ridiculous things, not like Simon, not like the Golem, yet he didn't doubt it was genuine. How delightful. 'The fighting puppet of Ikebukuro', he was nicknamed, and the general consensus was anyone stupid enough to pick a fight with him deserved what was coming to them.

He was in the Dollars too. Along with basically everyone else and their grandmothers, so it seemed.

Apparently affiliated with the Black Bike. Unlikely to have anything to do with the missing head, and it would be unwise to question him anyway - he supposedly kept to himself, on the whole, except with regards to Izaya when he would tear the city apart to try and kill him. It was a testament to Izaya's own skills that he was still _alive_. Jim was infinitely glad _he_ had a less lethal taste in nemesis. The day Sherlock hurled a motorbike at his head, that would be the day he got scared. Until then the consulting detective remained a mere inconvenience - a particularly irksome one at that.

He wondered if the constant reminders to 'Beware blond bartenders' were a sign he should wrap this up quickly and vacate the city. As for the name, it seemed a tad ironic; 'quiet island of peace' indeed.

By the end of the week, Jim would leave this fascinating place, which was almost a shame. He was becoming fond of its inherent absurdity. A place where even the guy who kept causing said problem with flying vending machines was just an everyday part of the scenery. A place where Celty Sturluson was practically normal.

If the head didn't turn up by then, whatever. That would be someone else's problem. End of story.

Except it wasn't.


	5. Whatever You Do, Avoid Blond Bartenders

**Chapter 4 ('Whatever You Do, Avoid Blond Bartenders')**

He woke up peeling himself off the side of a building and wondering where he went wrong. How was it possible _for him_ to fuck up quite that badly? This was the kind of thing that happened to other people. Preferably Sherlock, wandering into a trap Jim would hypothetically set for him one day (he contemplated arranging something where Sherlock would come face to face with Shizuo, inevitably annoy him greatly with his deductions, then get beaten into pulp). That would be fun to watch. Right now everything hurt, except his right elbow – no, that hurt too. Everything hurt. Including his spleen, which he really, really wanted to vent right now at someone. He groaned, fell off the indent he'd made in the wall, and landing on top of an upturned vending machine.

On a scale of 1-10, how much of a mistake had he made?

27.

Or 28.

Possibly more. _Definitely_ more. He should never have come to Ikebukuro. He'd been tricked by the urban legends and thought it might be a laugh. And it had been up until a certain point several minutes before, when he failed to obey a basic rule by complete 'accident'.

Whatever you do, avoid blond bartenders.

That had gone tits up, hadn't it?

As a rule, Jim prided himself on knowing when to pick his fights. On sticking to the shadows and staying out of the game when there was nothing to gain, not even amusement. But he'd had an idea, and it seemed to make sense at the time. So he'd rolled with it. Look – it was a calculated risk (at least he'd thought it was). There was someone of the calibre of Shizuo working downstairs? He hated Izaya, who was definitely hiding _something_. It was only natural for Moriarty to want to get him in on it. If he could employ Shizuo, even if only for this gig, he'd have a personal one man army. But he had to go about it the right way. No screwing around this time, fun though it might sound. The consequences could be severe.

Retrospectively, he really should have sent a proxy. What was it, why did he chose not to? He was fascinated. Ikebukuro was too exhilarating, that was the thing. He'd become drunk on its strangeness, enjoying himself too much; which he hadn't believed was possible, until the shit hit the fan – or until the vending machine hit him squarely in the stomach, sending him hurtling backwards and then it went black.

Then he woke up, peeling himself off a wall. He landed on the vending machine and shakily began to regain his balance.

Then he threw up.

There was a tall shadow approaching slowly, gradually, every ounce of fury a weight slowing it down. Slowly, instilling instinctive fear. Slowly, working up to something more. Jim looked up and saw the blond bartender, a wide, unhinged smile on his face. He thought about Izaya's grin, and how lethally friendly that had seemed at the time, then he looked up at this smile and by contrast it was hardly a smile at all, it made no pretences about friendliness or its owner's intentions. Instead, it was the look of a man who was beyond furious, veins pulsing visibly in his temples, the grin stretched wide across his face as he relished what was to come – that being, beating the shit out of poor little Jim.

"That fuckin' flea send you?" Shizuo's voice was barely restraining itself, only just holding back from pure unbridled rage. Flea – that had to be Izaya, of course. An apt description. An irritating itch that wouldn't go away. "Huh?!"

Of course. _That_ was where he'd gone wrong. He'd mentioned Izaya by name. That was when Shizuo's expression had gone from mildly irked to wildly incensed instantly. Split-second. Without any warning, except perhaps a flickering tension of the eyebrows before _this_.

On his way outside, Jim had spotted the blond bartender (no, that was a misnomer, he wasn't _actually_ a bartender was he?), walking with that co-worker of his, cigarette sticking out the corner of his mouth. And he'd made a split-second decision to ignore the warnings and talk to the tall man about it, make the offer, in an understated, subtle, totally non-objectionable way. He could do that. It'd be a piece of cake. Jim associated with all kinds of people, some of whom had impressive tempers. He'd be able to handle this one guy.

 _Wrong_.

"Excuse me-" he'd begun, and the tall man had wheeled, regarding him disdainfully from behind blue sunglasses. In the background, Shizuo's dreadlocked companion was already taking steps back, his expression resigned. "I have a proposition for you." Shizuo cocked his head, confused. He didn't seem that menacing, but Moriarty knew better. He'd seen evidence of that. Appearances aside, Shizuo was not someone to be trifled with. "There's an item I happen to be looking for, and I'm certain it's in the possession of one Orihara Izaya. I hear you two have an impressive feu-"

Three things happened. Three deeply inevitable and not overly surprising things. One – the air changed. It became taut and unsettling, the scent of rain before a storm. Two – Shizuo snapped the cigarette in two and crushed it underfoot, swiftly and methodically, as though this were routine. And then he picked up the vending machine, a sudden roar breaking free. Which is roughly when Moriarty found himself reconsidering the whole trip, and seconds later found himself embedded in a _wall._

And that was how he'd got here, the tall, lanky figure of Shizuo towering over him and _glaring_ with a look that could have killed, to accompany the manic smile.

"No," Jim managed, backing away slowly, stumbling slightly as he did so. He heard an observer laugh. There _were_ observers, some terrified, some seeming to be enjoying the show. "I have nothing to do with him-"

"Like hell you don't," Shizuo growled. "Why'd you mention him otherwise?"

Moriarty sensed an undercurrent of paranoia running through those words, that this guy was used to being pestered and followed and attacked, and that no doubt Izaya was behind some of them. His suspicion was justified.

Approaching him had been honestly, a terrible idea. Still. You never knew how badly you've cocked up until you tried, right?

"Look…" he fell into a coughing fit, his ribs aching. "I'm a…" _What was the right word?_ He settled on one that did the job. "Consultant. I get hired to look into things. There's an item missing that some big important people want found...alright? They hired _me_. I suspect a certain info broker...knows more than he's letting on. That's all."

 _Not dying_ was a major priority right now. There were plenty of things he _could_ say, but instead, he decided to play the hapless foreigner, amp up the fear, act scared so that maybe a) someone would intervene (if anyone _could_ resolve this nightmare, that'd be just fine) or b) he'd worm his way out of it, the blond man would realise he'd made a mistake, that little Jimmy-boy was innocent and leave him alone. Either would be nice. Preferably the second option. That way Shizuo wouldn't end up dead, would remain a fixture of Ikebukuro and continue to make Izaya Orihara's life hell. Because the bastard sure as fuck deserved it.

"What item?"

Moriarty mulled over how much he wanted to admit to. He decided to tell the truth, and see how Shizuo reacted. If he delivered it with enough innocent, hapless fear, it would sell his story, right? "A...a head, alright?" Shizuo's expression darkened, the grin falling away as he pressed Jim into the wall, the bricks buckling where his hands dug in. _He knows Celty._ Jim continued babbling. "Something weird. I...I didn't ask questions! I don't ask questions, I just do what I'm told." Ahahahah LIES WERE FUN WEREN'T THEY. "Oh god, please don't kill me, I have someone waiting for me back home I want to get back safely please, please don't kill me."

"Shizuo!" the dreadlocked man yelled. "C'mon. We've got places to be."

Silence. The tall man turned away, letting Moriarty sink to the floor in an exceedingly melodramatic fashion, a crumpled heap, relieved, but also intrigued at what was about to happen next.

"Coming, Tom _-san_ ," Shizuo replied, his voice quieter, level and frankly, completely ordinary. He walked off to rejoin his co-worker and was gone. Just like that. It was over as suddenly as it had begun.

Moriarty caught his breath, pulled himself to his feet, and struggled off to his hotel room. He'd see a doctor when he got home. Right now he just wanted to sleep for as long as he could, dream away his gross miscalculation. He hated making mistakes, especially of that magnitude.

He slept.

'Whatever you do' he thought, before drifting off 'Avoid blond bartenders'.

Now that was advice he wished he'd taken.

As soon as he could, he was getting the hell out of there. And staying out. Leave the Ikebukuro business and the mess with the missing head to other people, underlings. Leave Izaya Orihara to get the shit beaten out of him as soon as possible, hopefully. Leave it all to people who gave a damn, i.e., not him.

He was going home.

And he would put this embarrassing mess behind him.

End of.

Maybe one day he _would_ send Sherlock here. _One day_.

Or something like that, anyway. Something along those lines. Yeah. That. Definitely. It'd be a laugh, wouldn't it?

He'd call Nebula and explain he was so sorry, but he couldn't look into this matter personally for much longer, something had come up. Other people would deal with it.

And Jim would get the hell out of this city, stay gone, and leave it to others to find the missing head.

Leave it behind, and let the plot untangle itself…

And who knew what would happen _next_?


End file.
